It’s a tired old cliché from politicians that the only poll that matters is the one on election day.

Boy, was that ever true last week.

Venture capitalist Bruce Rauner won the Republican nomination for governor, of course, but not by anywhere near the blowout the polls had predicted leading up to the election. Rauner beat out Sen. Kirk Dillard of Hinsdale by three percentage points, getting about 40 percent of the vote to Dillard’s 37 percent. That’s a far cry from the double digit leads most polls showed Rauner with just days before the election. In some of them, Dillard would have had to more than double his support to win.

A lot of analysts gave unions, particularly those representing public employees, credit for making the race closer than the opinion polls indicated. Dillard was the only viable option to the union-bashing Rauner. Treasurer Dan Rutherford’s legal troubles took him out of the running, and Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington voted for the pension reforms detested by unions.

The problem, of course, is finishing second means nothing. So the public employee union voters out there now have a choice between Gov. Pat Quinn, champion of the pension reforms they hate, or Rauner who said those reforms didn’t go far enough. Rauner said current pension plans should be frozen and all workers moved into a 401(k)-style retirement plan. Withholding support for Quinn just enhances Rauner’s chances, so that really isn’t much of an option.

This could be a painful election season for union voters.

Wasting no time

We’ll have to correct a somewhat misleading question from last week.

The question was how much of a gap there would be between the primary election and the first appearance of negative ads by a candidate directed at his opponent, namely in the governor’s race. The question sort of implied there would be a gap, even if it was brief.

That was wrong. Quinn started airing an ad critical of Rauner’s position on the minimum wage even as the votes were still being counted Tuesday. So arguably, there was a gap, but one measured in hours, not days.

Hope you enjoyed the campaign respite.

Hasty move

By the way, the rush to vilify the opponent resulted in the first oops of the campaign season.

Quinn’s campaign produced a video comparing Rauner to the villainous C. Montgomery Burns, the mega-moneybags owner of the nuclear power plant in the TV series “The Simpsons.” As Quinn videos go, it was far better than Squeezy.

Page 2 of 2 - Alas, Fox Broadcasting doesn’t allow clips from the show to be used in political campaigns. The video soon disappeared.

Coincidence?

House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, insisted last week that his proposed constitutional amendment to place a 3 percent surcharge on incomes over $1 million wasn’t directed at Rauner and his wealthy supporters.

No, it was just something he’d been kicking around for a while and decided to roll it out last week — two days after Rauner won the Republican nomination. Ooookay.

Madigan said the plan would produce an extra $1 billion a year for K-12 schools. There are probably a few skeptics out there, and not just affected millionaires, who might doubt that will actually be additional money. It’s extra money only if the legislation doesn’t decide to subtract $1 billion going to schools that comes from other income taxes. Not that the General Assembly has ever engaged in that sort of bait and switch before.

Quotable

“If they’re in Illinois today, they’re probably so much in love with Illinois, they’re not going to leave. They’ll be grateful for this opportunity to support lower education.” — Madigan, dismissing the notion that millionaires will flee the state under his plan to place a 3 percent income tax surcharge on millionaires.

Doug Finke covers Illinois politics for the Springfield State Journal-Register. He can be reached at (217) 788-1527 or doug.finke@sj-r.com